The Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI) is a wireless standard proposed for a wireless multimedia device network, which may be used at home, in the office or in other short-range wireless network environments. WHDI allows for high bandwidth wireless channels for sending content between devices, which may support uncompressed High Definition (HD) content. For example, a DVD player may be wirelessly connected to multiple HDTVs and send uncompressed content to the HDTVs using WHDI. WHDI eliminates the need for cabling, such as High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) cables, component cables, etc., used to transmit uncompressed content between devices. Conventional wireless technologies such as 802.11, BLUETOOTH, etc., do not have the bandwidth or interface to transmit uncompressed multimedia content between devices.
WHDI can be used in various environments. For example, a user located in a single family home or in an apartment may connect a DVD player, an MP3 player, a laptop PC, a gaming console, and a flat panel TV all together, wirelessly, using WHDI. In another environment, a user wirelessly connects a multimedia projector in a conference room to a desktop PC in his office, and to a set of notebook computers using WHDI. In these and other examples, security is a concern because of the wireless communication between the WHDI devices. Due to the nature of wireless networks, they are typically easy to identify by unauthorized users. An unauthorized user may attempt to identify and connect to the devices connected to a home WHDI network. The homeowner may desire to keep the identity of their devices private away from unauthorized users. For example, a homeowner may not want a neighbor to know they have 5 HDTVs, or they may not want any non-family members to know they have a server connected to their home network, because the server may contain confidential information, such as personal videos, etc. While WHDI provides the protocol and interfaces for high-bandwidth wireless networks, WHDI may lack the security procedures to maintain user privacy.